


When the Sea Rises to Meet Us

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Eventual Smut, Fairy Tale Elements, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Selkie AU, Urban Fantasy, Winter Soldier Re-Write, cap!steve - Freeform, selkie!Bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-08-19 14:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20211190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Plagued by hazy dreams of the ice that had imprisoned him, Steve Rogers faces a modern world and attempts to navigate the ever-dissolving boundaries between the magic and non-magic world.At a party on St. Brigid's Day, where winter fades and spring begins, Steve stumbles across a man who reminds him of his past and makes him ache for a possible future -  when he hands the man the thing he assumes to be his jacket, he unknowingly frees him from decades of imprisonment, and irreparably binds their destines together.(A Selkie AU where Steve gives Bucky his sealskin back and accidentally becomes betrothed to the last of the selkies)





	1. Imbolc

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello and welcome to the selkie AU that I've been wanting to write for months now! Magic is a thing in this world, and Steve is familiar with it - he's a human who got lucky with the serum, and everyone else's powers/abilities will be explained as they go along (probably not well, because I'm mostly here for the supernatural romance, not so much the world building, meep!)
> 
> Relevant trigger warnings will appear at the start of every chapter (I tend not to put too many spoiler-y warnings in the overall fic tags, but if you're ever worried about something you see coming, feel free to message me on tumblr and I'm more than happy to share details with you!).
> 
> For instance, for chapter one, we have a few warnings, which are listed in the chapter notes. Please check them out before reading!
> 
> **Overall Note for the fic, in case you were worried**  
~~While most selkie mythology/lore _absolutely_ deals with themes of dubcon/non con, there won't be any graphic depiction of anything of that sort in this fic! Bucky is 100% full of rage over being held by Hydra for decades, and his rage comes from many different places, but we'll be focusing more on the violence they made him commit, and not on what they did to him as a captive past the typical regular canon elements. Steve (and I'm sure you) will be filling in the blanks on his own, and when that sort of thing comes up in his narration/thought process, it will earn a chapter warning (and again, it won't be graphic). 
> 
> thanks for giving this fic a chance! Relevant explanations will be in the end notes to fill in some of the lore where I think it might be necessary. Feel free to ask any questions!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve meets a mysterious stranger at a party and sets his destiny into motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings**  
~Fairly graphic description of canonical drowning (Steve in the plane, cockpit filling with water, his time underwater - he's conscious for most of it in this 'verse) in a nightmare - heavy description of **panic** as part of drowning as well.
> 
> ~a teenager tries to sneak alcohol away from a party (aka implied underage drinking)
> 
> ~Snake shows up in a vision and bites the POV character (no real harm was done to human or snek in this scene)
> 
> ~Fairy Tale elements that are dark - selkie lore usually has beautiful women imprisoned by men who steal their sealskin (which lets them turn back into a seal and disappear into the ocean), and Bucky is being held by nefarious, awful people who will undoubtedly be familiar to you.

It’s cold: one of the first thoughts Steve can really put together as he pushes through the darkness, sinking slower than a stone, shackled to an unforgiving current.

He’s never been this cold before: not that winter in Prospect Park when the frost stole into the windows, leaking through the cracks in the walls and spreading like spiderwebs into his home; not that time he crashed into a snowbank after pushing Tommy Callahan in retribution for him tripping little Niamh from the tenement next door; not when he gripped the rusted iron handle of the shovel, pushing half-frozen dirt over a pine box, Father William the only witness to his tears, Father William and maybe, maybe Steve might have argued at one point, God himself.

Steve can’t think of anything but the cold, so by the time the water reaches his knees, he remembers he always should have been afraid of the sea. He remembers he should be praying the cold steals his breath before the water does. There are less painful ways to die, after all. He’d always assumed it’d be in a fight, or at the end of the gun, but now there’s cold, and there’s water, and looking at the two, he’ll take the first. 

He closes his eyes and tries to remember his prayers, but he’s past that point; he looks out the windshield, and the sea rushes in the rapidly spreading cracks to embrace him as the plane settles against the bottom of the ocean. He thinks, quietly, and then so loudly it hurts his own head, that _ this isn’t fair. _ One wrong knock to his bad ear five years ago and he’d be out for three hours. Now with his new and improved constitution, he’s gotta watch this happen. 

It’s cold, and it hurts, and the water passes his waist. He’s strong, but he can’t hold back the ocean. 

And then: a flash of something outside the plane, quick enough to be imagined.

Steve blinks salt water out of his eyes and watches for the flash again. 

A shape forms in the water, black and spiraling, not fighting the current that’s pulled Steve down, but becoming part of it. It hurts to breathe now, but Steve watches carefully for a sign of friend or foe.

The shape presses against the glass, and Steve presses his hand against it as well..

“Please,” he whispers, fear making his voice raw. “Please, I don’t want to die like this.”

He’s never begged before, but now seems like the time to start.

Eyes stormier than the sea stare back at him; a stab of familiarity cuts through Steve’s heart, but that could also be the sting of the water, now creeping over his chest.

“Please.” Steve’s hand curls into a fist. Pounds against the glass. “Please, don’t leave me here.”

The shape shifts in the water, becomes something certainly familiar, before twisting out of recognition again. The blue-grey eyes remain on him the whole time, and Steve clings to them like a life line because he can sense the power rolling off the shape. This being, whatever it is, can help him. It’s stronger than he is, at least in the cold.

“I don’t want to die like this.” Steve’s voice cracks painfully. “Please.”

There’s a murmur that could be a curse, but the blue-grey eyes blink as the form twists in the water to look upwards, out of sight. Perhaps calculating. Perhaps debating whether or not to help him. 

“Please.” The water’s in his mouth now, pressing against his tongue. 

A light flashes in the cabin of the drowning plane: maybe blue, but at this depth, it looks nothing but golden, and Steve stares at the form, shocked to see - _ no, he can’t be right, there’s no way, not down this far, not years later _-

The light surrounds him, pushing him back into the chair, below the water’s surface. But the water’s not water anymore.

It’s water, and it’s not, and it’s ice surrounding him in crystalline fractals, ice but not ice locking him down. The one thing it is, however, is _ cold, _and his bones ache with it.

“I don’t want to die,” Steve repeats, his voice wavering in the water, the water that no longer drowns him but fills his lungs and weighs him down all the same. “Not like - I don’t want to die, please-”

The shape whispers back to him, and it lulls him for a moment, long enough for Steve to stop fighting the water, and the not-ice that surrounds him, long enough for the shape to twist and spiral in the inky black water one last time and disappear from sight.

For a long time, there’s only the unbearable pressure of being buried in the water, of the ocean taking him in and swallowing him down, but the cold isn’t the only thing he can think of when the salt water steals further into his lungs and becomes part of him. 

It’s the whisper of a distantly familiar home, speaking in the language of his mother. 

_ I will return for you, _ he’d said. _ Like the tide to the shore. _

Steve’s never heard an oath given so fervently, so he can’t understand when the shape doesn’t return, when he doesn’t see the blue-grey eyes staring back at him through his glass and steel and ice prison. 

And it’s ice now that seals him down here, ice but not ice, cold but deeper than cold, locking him in and holding him down. Steve sits at the bottom of the ocean and waits for a promise to be fulfilled, his mind drifting for what feels like centuries, and why can’t he die, why can’t he sleep, why wouldn’t he let Steve die, why does he have to feel this, why is he so _ cold _when he’d promised to return and he should have just let him die - 

\- Steve wakes, muscles spasming, and his hand reaching out to nearly punch a whole clean through the wall next to the bed.

It’s 4:22 a.m. according to the clock mounted on the wall opposite him.

It’s 4:22 a.m. He’s in Manhattan. It is 2014, not 1944, and he is in a bed, not in a plane. It was just a dream, one that he’s had over six hundred times since he came out of the ice, and one that he’s mentioned all of never in his SHIELD-mandated therapy sessions. 

It’s a good a time as any to get up, so Steve rolls out of bed, cracks his shoulder and walks to the window to stare out at the stretch of Midtown outside Stark Tower.

The Tower gives off a slight hum of power at all times, no doubt due to the elemental magic Tony had poured into it when it was constructed, and the energy lent to it by his equally powerful CEO and sometimes-romantic partner, Pepper Potts (Steve still hasn’t figured out what she is, and at this point, he’s too afraid and respectful to ask. His mother raised him right, after all). Steve tries his best to ignore the itch under his skin, a feeling he should better than to ignore today of all days. Tonight at sunset, after all, the walls will thin between worlds, and with the promise of spring comes the promise of change.

And not all change is good.

Some is fine, and most is neutral. Steve feels mostly the latter here in the future, with all of Manhattan spread out before him. There are laws now, to protect magic and non-magic from each other without separating them, and there were many advancements while Steve was in the ice, only possible through the cooperation of magic and non-magic. 

Down below, the lights of all-night spots for shifters reaches up to the sky, with beacons in the distance marking the boundary of sea and land for vessels on air and water. The sun is nothing but an idea at the moment, lurking on the eastern ridge of the world, the barest hint of grey the only suggestion of the approaching dawn.

A shape on the horizon solidifies and draws nearer. Steve smiles to himself as it comes into focus, a familiar wingspan that he can imagine covered in the sleek silver feathers of his best friend. It’s not often the Falcon rises before the dawn, but if he’s flown from the capitol for tonight’s festivities, he might have wanted to avoid traffic in the air as much as possible.

He raises a hand in greeting as Sam flies towards The Tower, and while he gets no returning gesture, he knows the keen sight of his friend will allow him to see the wave even at five hundred yards in the dark. 

“Sergeant Wilson will be landing in approximately four minutes at his current speed, Captain.”

Steve blinks and looks up, but he’s not sure why he’s looking up because he still doesn’t think that Jarvis is necessarily in the ceiling. He’s half-spirit, half-technology, and one of Tony’s most beloved friends, and Steve bows his head in appropriate respect.

“Thanks, Jarvis. Appreciate it.” 

Steve grabs a shirt from the dresser near the door on the way out, a quick walk from his bed to the front of the apartment - he had a much larger apartment before this, a whole floor of the Tower, but the space had made him anxious, had made his skin itch with unfamiliarity, and when Pepper had sussed out the reason for his discomfort, she’d encouraged Tony to give Steve a smaller space, one with nooks and crannies that he’s able to hide things away in, sentimental keepsakes from a time gone by. He’s never been happier with a space before, this little apartment that lets in all of the light somehow at all times of the day, and he still wonders how Pepper had known what he’d wanted, what he’d needed, before he had.

”Of course, sir. Shall I let Mr. Stark know you will be attending tonight’s festivities? You never did turn in your RSVP.”

Jarvis manages not to sound too scolding, but Steve rubs his neck sheepishly all the same.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go. What’s this party for again?”

“I believe it is for the Secretary’s birthday, sir.”

“Ah.” Steve nods and makes a face, forgetting which particular Secretary it’s supposed to be.

“...Secretary Pierce, sir.”

“Right.” Steve’s having trouble putting a name to the face, and that’s saying something considering his eidetic memory. Odd. “Secretary Pierce is the …”

If Jarvis could sigh, he would. 

“Secretary for the World Security-”

“World Security Council. Right.” A face comes to mind, and it makes Steve wrinkle his nose. “He’s the guy who turned down the Nobel Prize.”

“Yes, sir.”

Steve pauses at the door, something strange curling in his stomach. 

“Who does that?” He asks, more to himself than to Jarvis, but the AI answers anyway.

“Someone who wishes to avoid fanfare for what he believes was a responsibility to mankind?”

“No.” Steve shakes his head, drumming his long fingers against the door frame. “Doesn’t it strike you as rude that he’d turn down something from an international peace organization? The award is supposed to recognize the actions of his organization and the good it did to heal the tensions between the spirit community and human community in Bosnia. It’s not really about _ him. _Turning it down was a bizarre statement to make, almost like he didn’t consider those peace accords to be worthy of anything.”

“...If you say so, sir.” 

It sounds like Jarvis has more of an opinion than this than he wants to let on, but Sam should be here in any second, and Steve intends on greeting him when he lands. So, he takes the stairs up to the roof at a run and makes the fifteen flights in just under two minutes. He’s not even out of breath when he pushes the door to the rooftop open, the early morning breeze more of a gust at this height, and he grins wildly at the sight of Sam’s graceful, controlled descent.

Some of his hair manages to get in his eyes, right in the front where he’s letting it grow out slightly (a look Wanda assures him is _ cool _in that knowing, stern way of hers), and he plans his feet a little more firmly in the strong bursts of wind.

Sam, however, has not a feather out of place when his feet hit the tarmac. 

“Cap!”

He bounds over, and Steve catches him in a delighted embrace. They clap hands on each other’s backs, Steve being careful to avoid the sensitive place where Sam’s wings meet his shoulders, and they step back, both smiling broady. 

“Maybe we should take this inside, where it’s a little more Cap-friendly.”

Steve brushes hair out of his eyes with a derisive snort. “Yuck yuck.”

They jostle each other as they step onto the elevator bay and soon they’re descending through the still sleeping Tower.

“How’s everyone?” Sam asks as they near his floor.

“You know.” Steve shrugs with a grin, settling up against the side of the elevator, the whoosh of air shooting through the vent and controlling their descent a soothing noise. “Same old, same old. Wanda gets less sleep than I do, Pietro’s sneaking out in the middle of the night to do God knows what, Nat keeps scaring the shit out of Clint because she thinks it’s flirting, Tony’s determined to figure out the Stone--”

“--Pepper can’t be happy about that--”

“No, she is not. But she’s doing well, and I’m sure she’ll appreciate his obsession when he misses most of the party tonight.”

“Oh yeah, especially considering the birthday boy.” When Steve gives him a confused look, Sam lifts his eyebrows meaningfully. “Pierce and Tony had that falling out last year, right?”

Steve frowns, crossing his arms in front of his body. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“We definitely told you,” Sam assures him as they step off the elevator onto his floor. Unlike the coziness of Steve’s space, this apartment has all marble floors, with open spaces and massive windows that stretch across every wall, windows that can open on Sam’s request. “You just chose not to listen. It was a big ass fight too, man.”

“If Tony was involved, I’m sure it was.” Steve is more than used to the younger Stark’s tendencies at this point, but he’d be a hypocrite if he actually called Stark out for having a short fuse.

“Nah, Pierce was definitely in the wrong from what I was able to gather from Maria.” Something in Sam’s face becomes carefully neutral. “How is Maria - I mean, Agent Hill?”

“She’s good.” Steve grins evilly at Sam, who still is trying to look neutral. “She asked after you the other day, actually.”

“Really?” Sam looks like he’s trying very hard not to preen; at least, a wing lifts off his shoulder slightly, shimmering into sight through the Glamor he uses when not in flight. 

“Yep.” Steve smirks. “At least, she was talking about birds - no wait, a pigeon shat on her in Central Park, that’s what it was.”

“I will kick your ass,” Sam warns. His smile is still warm, though, and they don’t stop smiling as Sam flicks on the coffee machine and the sun finally begins to peek over the horizon. 

It’s the last day of January, and Imbolc is tomorrow. Steve can’t shake the feeling that something is about to change; it’s simmering under his skin and flashing up and down his spine, and his mother, rest her soul, had taught him to always listen to his instincts. Change is coming, and coming quick. Good or bad, he has yet to discover, but if his dreams last night were any indication, he’s not terribly excited to find out.

* * *

It’s miserably hot on the top floor of the Tower, the press of bodies oppressive and the beat of the music demanding and aggressive. Only the space by the refreshments remains slightly separate from the claustrophobia-inducing nightmare of the dance floor, which continually expands due to Thor’s creative interpretation of the boundaries of said floor. It’s to this corner of the room, behind the table laden with snacks and drinks, that Steve has retreated, and it’s from here that he watches the comings and goings of civilians and soldiers, agents and supers, not to mention shifters, vamps, a faun here and there, nereids who look even more uncomfortable than he does, and a number of pixies Steve _ swears _weren’t invited, not that he’d call them on it. 

He pretends to eat here and there, mostly to avoid engaging in conversation with people who want to ogle him and ask him bizarre questions about his status as a regular human with a disturbing propensity for avoiding death and super-strength, and also to avoid talking to the man of the hour, Alexander Pierce, who arrived a little after sunset with a face more sour than a lemon that he smoothed into a smile when Tony had extended his hand. 

Something about the secretary doesn’t sit right with Steve, and he knows better to ignore his gut on a day like Imbolc, with the worlds so close together, the boundary between them fizzling and diminishing until it’s nothing more than a veil. The secretary is currently three hundred feet away from Steve, his back to him; he’s flanked by a salt-and-pepper-haired man who stands like a soldier, ready to fight in his bizarrely long overcoat, and a slender, brown-haired man who stands as though waiting to run as he soon as he can, lines of tension evident in his well-fitting grey suit.

The stance is worrying, and Steve can’t shake the feeling that the man doesn’t want to be there; Steve’s eyes have drifted to Pierce’s smaller companion more than once, trying to figure out if he’s okay, but he can’t get a good look at his face, not unless he wants to give up his safe haven in the corner of the room and venture into the pit of bodies in the middle of the party. It doesn’t help that in addition to off-putting secretaries, Steve is also trying to avoid dancing for as long as he can. No one’s asked him to dance for the last hour, and he’s hoping to skip out on the activity entirely if he can.

Steve can’t help but wonder how long he has to maintain a presence here before he can go back downstairs and curl up on his favorite sofa, put on a movie, and then harass Sam over text until his friend comes to join him. If it wasn’t so late on a school night, he would have already enlisted Pietro and Wanda to get him out of here - and it’s occurred to him already that he could pretend to need to help the twins with their homework (not that Wanda ever seems to need help on her homework given that she is, in fact, a terrifyingly competent witch with an uncanny ability to find any answer she needs). 

It’s as he’s thinking about the twins that there’s a faint flush of air near his ear. Steve turns with a frown and sighs, his eyes on the punch bowl, and counts to three, his eyes not even trying to track movement. He holds a hand out at the last possible moment, and sure enough, something fast and very slender slams into his arm, hard enough to break a normal person’s bones.

But, Steve isn’t a normal person; he fixes the culprit with a stern glare, grips their forearm firmly but not tightly, and lifts an eyebrow.

“Pietro.”

“Oh, hello, Steven.” Pietro doesn’t look nearly apologetic enough for having been caught sneaking into an adults-only party. “I was hoping to see you.”

“Mhm.” Steve reaches behind Pietro to snag the large cup of punch from his hand. “And I’m sure you’re aware that there’s alcohol in this?”

“Steve,” Pietro whines, “Come on, I’ll burn through it in less than ten seconds!”

“It’s illegal,” Steve says sternly. “You’re sixteen, and you’ll be sixteen for more than the next ten seconds.”

“Ugh.” Pietro hands over the cup with a disturbing lack of resistance, a lack Steve is more than careful to note. “You’re so - so - you’re so _ Captain America. _”

“You’re darn right.” Steve smirks and downs the confiscated punch in one go, ignoring the irritated grumble of the lanky teen. “Now, about those beers you have.”

“What beers?” Pietro’s eyes dart to the door for the stairs, six hundred feet across the room.

“The ones you’re unsuccessfully hiding in your pocket.”

“Oh. Yes. Those beers. You see, I think, they’re really-” He’s gone in less than a blink of an eye, and Steve watches the door to the stairs snap shut six hundred feet away. 

Well, they’ll have to have a talk later. 

For now, Steve sighs and meanders over to the table, ducking his head before the girl from accounting, Mary Beth, can catch his eye. It’s not her fault he’s trying to avoid her - they went on a very unsuccessful date with him a few months ago, set up and enforced by Natasha - because it definitely wasn’t her fault that he froze when snow fell, unexpected and unwelcome, out of the sky. He doesn’t do well with snow or cold or ice these days, and he still doesn’t know what she thinks of seeing a literal American icon almost lose his shit from a few flurries.

He doesn’t care to find out.

Pretending that he finds the surface of the bright pink punch to be the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen, Steve leans over it and hums to himself, letting his mind drift for a second or two. 

The surface of the punch shifts, and Steve blinks, disbelieving for a second. Probably just a tremor from the dance floor, he reasons, just wobbling the table and making it look as though -

Shapes emerge on the surface, clearer and brighter than the ones he’d caught sight of in the scrying bowl as a child, when he’d gone looking for answers to questions he was too young to ask. Steve tries to blink but can’t, the shapes morphing into a vision before he can form a full thought.

It’s New York City, sculpted from ice that looks near metallic in the sunlight; it’s dazzling, and as the vision swoops down and tunnels into the streets of his childhood, Steve can’t decide if it’s beautiful or terrifying. The sun meets with the ice in the back alleys of Brooklyn, the crystals reaching into the water he walked along as a boy and freezing it as well - Steve shivers in sympathy, the chill from his last nightmare still lingering - and as he pitches forward with the vision into a crack in the ice, he finds himself on soft green grass, stretching out to a perfect, blue bay rimmed by white cliffs. 

The air is sweet here, and he wonders if he’s left the party entirely in his physical form because it all feels so impossibly real. He almost hopes he has transported to this other place, as the meadow is so pleasant - much more pleasant than the crush of bodies and overwhelming noise at the Tower. 

The birds calling in the distance sing a tune he doesn’t think he ever learned but remembers all the same. A rustling to his left makes him look down: among the grass is a snake, and while Steve jolts in fear for a moment, he frowns and studies its movements as it winds underfoot and curls around his ankle. 

Just as he grows comfortable with the reptilian presence, the snake bites him above the ankle without warning. Steve makes a noise of protest before something jerks behind his navel, pulling him violently backwards in the vision, away from the meadow that rings true with the feeling of home, and he lands across from the Tower. At least, what he thinks is the Tower, if it were carved of marble and ringed with faerie circles. Runes and ancient patterns line the walls that reach to the heavens, and Steve finds himself calling out for someone, without knowing the name, and when he turns, he finds himself staring into blue-grey eyes lined with pain and sorrow.

He blinks, finally, and finds himself standing in front of the punch, his stomach unsettled and eyes gritty as though he’s been crying.

“Are you okay, Captain Rogers?” Dr. Banner, a kind-eyed alchemist with more secrets than anyone Steve’s ever met, tilts his head at him from across the table. 

“Uh - yeah, yeah, I’m okay, thanks Bruce.” Steve gives him a shaky smile and wipes his face. “Think I’m just overheated.”

“If you snuck off, I wouldn’t tell Tony,” Bruce offers amicably. “Hey! We can be each other’s alibis and both leave now. We can say we saw each other here all night.”

“I like the sound of that,” Steve says with a grin. “I think I remember seeing you here until at least midnight.”

“Yes, I believe we shared a plate of horderves right around then, didn’t we?” Bruce chuckles and gives an awkward little wave of farewell before disappearing in the crowd.

Steve smiles after him, compassion and concern making his heart twinge.

It was the compound in his blood, after all, that had led to the curse on Bruce. The alchemist had been pushed too hard by the department funding his research to re-develop the once-in-a-generation transmutation Steve had undergone in the 40s, and it had left him with a literally monstrous persona that flared up when Bruce least desired it to.

Still, the Hulk - as Tony had lovingly called the other-Bruce - is useful as hell in a fight, and Steve has zero problem with accepting Bruce in both forms; however, he can’t believe Bruce risked coming here tonight though, as stress seemed to be the main trigger for his switch to the Hulk, and the last he checked, Bruce’s handle on the situation was more shaky on nights where magic was high and the boundaries around reality were fuzzy at best.

Thinking with a frown on his face, Steve begins to wind his way through the dance floor, hoping he can clear it without bumping into Pierce or Stark, both of whom will undoubtedly want a conversation (Tony will shout his ear off about the Stone and whatever property he discovered today, and Pierce, well, Steve doesn’t want to think about what the Secretary of the World Security Council might want to say to a supersoldier who was arrested last month for protesting against Triskeles Corps predatory laboratories). 

Before he can make it to the other side of the floor - he’s just passing the secretary and his men, his head ducked in an effort to make himself disappear (ridiculous, honestly, he’s almost six and a half feet tall, and broader than anyone else in the room) - the lights in the floor dim briefly, and there’s the distinct sound of someone clearing their throat. 

“Sorry, ladies and gents. I’m sure you all wanted to bop around and enjoy my endless free food for a little while longer” - a few people in the crowd laugh, but most know well enough that Tony doesn’t necessarily _ need _people to laugh at his shit jokes - “but I’ve been told that this is a very important night. St. Braggard’s Day-”

A hiss of a whisper comes over the microphone. “-- It’s _ Brigid’s _ Day, I swear to _ God, _Tony-”

“Sorry, Ms. Potts.” Real laughter breaks out in the crowd, and Tony, from his perch up on the stairs, beams up happily at the strawberry blond woman (is she a goddess? A sorceress? Steve still can’t tell, and he thinks it should bother him more, but she’s so damn benevolent it’s hard to worry) before he continues.

“So, as the light half of the year begins, we’d like to do something symbolic of the shift, blah, blah, blah--_ yowch! _ C’mon, Potts!--”

More laughter from the crowd as Pepper stomps on Tony’s foot and wrenches the microphone out of his hand. 

“We would like to invite our guests to dance with someone they did not arrive here with. As the season of healing and light begins, we believe it will be an auspicious invitation for good fortune in the coming months.” Pepper smiles sweetly down at them all, backlit by the lights strung up on the ceiling, and Steve’s pretty settled on _ goddess _after all. “Now, turn and find a new partner.”

Pepper tosses her hair over her shoulder and hands the mic back to Tony, and everyone can hear him mumble an invitation to dance - and Steve hopes for Tony’s sake that Pepper’s got an ounce of benevolence left in her to say yes.

He turns to go, and almost immediately bumps into another person; Steve startles back with an apology, hoping against hope he didn’t stomp on their feet too hard, before he sees who he ran into.

It’s Pierce’s companion, specifically, the smaller one. And Steve can see his face now, and it’s no secret that his sort of speeches sound better on battlefields, but if he had to sum up what the other man looked like in a few choice words, it would be…

_ Wow _.

“Hi,” he breathes, thunderstruck and frozen to where he stands. It’s as though the dance floor fades away around him, and he doesn’t quite understand it, never felt anything quite like it before, at least, not as a man. 

The other man doesn’t smile or say anything in response: his blue-grey eyes, arresting and a haunting color Steve swears is familiar, are unblinking as he stares up at Steve. Dark brown curls wisp over his forehead, and his full bottom lip is the color of a ripe strawberry.

Steve realizes he’s been staring at the stranger’s mouth for much longer than is polite (and really, zero seconds is polite, and it’s been about three, and _ hm, wouldn’t it be great if the ground swallowed him whole right about now? _) but before he can blink, let alone apologize, the music starts up, a lively waltz that’s odd in contrast to the loud pop music that’s been blasting for the last couple hours.

“Aren’t you going to dance?” Sam shouts, already spinning by with Maria Hill. 

He catches a glimpse of who Steve’s frozen in front of, and then waggles his eyebrows, a massive smile breaking out across his face. Somehow, he manages to wrangle Hill over in Steve’s direction enough that he can bump into Steve’s back, pushing him forward towards the handsome, young man. “I really think you two should dance!” Sam declares unhelpfully, and he and Maria are both giggling as they disappear into the dancing crowd, still waltzing with carefree joy.

Steve offers his hand to the other man, aware that at this point it would be beyond rude of him to not do so, but the man looks hesitant for a long moment, swallowing hard but still not speaking.

Pierce is dancing with Nat, whose smile looks disturbingly like the one she uses to shoot unfriendlies out of the air, and he snaps something in Russian, the consonants harsh and unfamiliar to Steve. The other man nods and stands up straight, taking Steve’s hand with a look of determination flashing in his eyes. 

They’re the color of the ocean, Steve decides as they start to dance. That’s why they’re so familiar - he’s projecting the idea that they match the eyes outside the icy prison of his dreams because he wants to make his dreams more familiar and less terrifying. And, if the eyes that haunt him could be in the face of a man as handsome as this, well, Steve might be better able to handle how terrifying his nightmares are.

Not too much time can be spent dwelling on how beautiful this man’s eyes are, not when Steve remembers that he doesn’t actually know how to dance. He laughs and ducks his head, already shuffling his feet awkwardly, feeling bad for his partner for having to deal with him, but the hand that had been delicately placed on his waist at the start of the dance squeezes a little more firmly, causing Steve to look back into the pair of eyes that feel as though they’re already emblazoned in his mind. 

There’s a soft, quiet smile on the man’s face now, and he hums something, a harmony to the waltz playing, and it’s so eerily beautiful that Steve loses count even more of his steps and trips up a little. Rather than laugh at him, the man holds Steve’s hand a little more firmly, ducks into Steve’s grip on his shoulder a little more - and there’s something about this man, some power or sense of _ something more _that lingers under his skin, and it’s unsettling and intriguing and confusing - and subtly begins to guide them.

“_ Spasibo _,” Steve murmurs under the thread of music that’s spinning around them, from the band and from the other man. 

The humming stops, and his dancing partner looks up at him guiltily (not that he has far to look - Steve guesses he’s only about four inches shorter than he is, and while he certainly looks willowy, there’s no denying the power that lurks in his well-defined, if graceful, muscles). 

“Oh, uh,” Steve feels himself blushing, right to the tips of his ears. “_ Russkiy _ ? I’m - Iz... _ izvineeti _,” the vowels sit heavily in his mouth, and he curses himself suddenly for not trying to learn the language when Nat offered, “I assumed you spoke Russian because - well, the Secretary--”

He’s mortified when the blue-grey eyes grow glassy, cold and distant as though the shutters have been pulled across a window. _ Of course. _ Steve had overheard the Secretary speaking in Russian to his dancing partner but it certainly hadn’t looked or sounded particularly happy. What if he’d witnessed a moment of domestic dispute (and for some reason, the thought of this man being in a domestic _ anything _with Secretary Pierce makes him want to punch something) or at the very least, something painful for the other man? 

And he’d gone and pointed it out.

“Sorry,” Steve whispers, cheeks flaming. 

His dancing partner looks up, the flash of determination back in his eyes, and he smiles again, the only communication he seems willing to give at this point, but hell, Steve will take it. 

They dance in silence for a while, and when the other man doesn’t begin to hum again, Steve can’t help but feel like he’d broken a spell earlier, crossed some line he shouldn’t have, by speaking in Russian to this man. The other man doesn’t seem as perturbed though, and his blue-grey eyes don’t leave Steve’s face; the staring should be uncomfortable, Steve knows, but he can’t help but return the gaze for most of their dance, their feet moving without thought now, some grace of the goddess guiding their movements without incident.

They’re attracting stares well before the end of the song, but neither of them notice, as fixed as their eyes are on each other - later, some would comment that they looked almost like moonlight skipping across the ocean, scattering over wave and pushing across the tides, but the thought would leave their heads as quickly as it came, as though it hadn’t ever been theirs to keep.

Steve’s caught between the beauty of the man, the palpable sanctity of their movements, and the unshakeable feeling that becomes undeniable over the course of the song: Steve has seen this man before. It’s impossible, truly beyond logic, but he can’t help but compare his dancing partner to a friend he made long ago, on a cold winter’s day in 1936.

That day comes to him in flashes even now -

_ His hands, cracked and bleeding from the harsh steel of the shovel; dirt under his fingernails, the same dirt that lay on top of his mother; crying into the harbor having fallen to his knees, throat hoarse from screaming at an uncaring God; tears slipping down his nose, heat on his skin against the cold of the afternoon; a hand on his shoulder, and when he’d turned, expecting a fist in his face, a kind-eyed man, a few years older than he was, sitting on the dock next to him, hair plastered to his head as though he’d just climbed out of the water. _

Steve had barely caught the man’s name before he’d gone to bed that night - he’d offered the threadbare couch across from the bed to him, and the man had taken it almost warily, his oilskin bag clutched tight to his chest the whole time (but it was the Depression, and people were paranoid all the time, so Steve hadn’t thought much of it), and they’d murmured to each other in Gaelic until sleep had stolen across Steve’s eyes, a strange sense of comfort easing into his sick and grieving heart.

_ Blue-grey eyes, prettier than the ocean; the man was gone before Steve woke the next morning, and if it weren’t for the slightly damp imprint on his mother’s old couch, he would have thought he dreamt the whole thing. _

The song ends, as all songs do, and Steve drags himself out of the past long enough to regret saying goodbye to this man in the present. 

“Do I know you?” He asks, his voice quiet for how bold his heart beats in his chest. The blue-grey eyes are unblinking as they stare into his, and Steve swallows down his nerves. “Have we - have we met?”

Steve swears he sees the other man nod, his chin moving a fraction of an inch, but he must be imagining it, imagining the way the man flinches slightly when Steve opens his mouth and says “_ Bu _\--?”

His question - a name, really, he just wanted a name - is cut off by a harsh, loud voice to his right. “Song’s over, Winter. Time to go.”

_ Winter _?

Again, the spell between them is broken as Steve’s reminded of other people - and of the reality that the man in his arms (already slipping away, to be fair, as his dancing partner takes a step back, his head bowed and cheeks flushed, hands shaking) can’t be a day older than twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight. If he were the friend Steve had made on one of the worst days of his life, he would be almost a century old by now. 

“My apologies.” Steve turns to frown at Pierce’s other companion, the fierce, grey-haired man who stands like a soldier. He sizes him up, and tenses, lip curling, when the other man does the same. “I thought the party went until midnight.”

“Maybe for you it does. But _ you, _” he snarls at the man Steve’s been dancing with, and Steve’s hands curl into fists. It’s not his imagination that his dancing partner’s fists curl too. “You know you need to be home before ten. Off you get.”

When the man reaches for Steve’s partner, Steve catches his forearm, teeth bared. “I think he can make that decision for himself.” 

The would-be soldier glares at him, but his eyes lack the ferocity of men Steve has fought - and killed - in his past lifetime. Something twists in his expression, and he smiles, a grimace more than anything. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Captain. Brock Rumlow, personal assistant to Secretary Pierce.”

Steve nods in the barest display of manners he can muster. “It’s a real pleasure.” 

He doesn’t let go of Rumlow’s forearm for three more seconds.

When he does, Rumlow shakes his arm out with the slightest movement, as though trying to hide it from Steve, and he only _ barely _speaks to the mysterious, handsome man with more civility than before. 

“We’re leaving as soon as I let Pierce know.” He begins to walk past, stretching an arm out to push through the crowd. “Captain.”

It’s as Rumlow begins to elbow through the crowd in earnest that it happens.

His overcoat shifts, someone jostles into him - Steve swears he catches a flash of strawberry blond hair, but it’s gone before he can be sure - and something soft and dark grey flutters to the floor.

Steve bends to grab it before he can think twice, and he weighs it in his hands while he straightens back up.

It’s almost like fur, but it’s not - it’s too sleek to be fur, too light to be a proper coat. Whatever it is, it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, iridescent where it shouldn’t be, the floating candles around the dance floor shimmering against it, catching Steve’s eye and making his breath catch in his throat. 

There’s a noise of almost pain, directly in front of him.

Steve looks up to see the strange, beautiful man staring at him, with those blue-grey eyes that have demanded so much of his attention and desire for the night, and Steve frowns when he realizes that it’s not _ him _the man’s staring at.

It’s what’s in his hands. The fur has caught the other man’s attention, and the expression on his face is nothing short of heartbroken.

When he catches Steve staring at him, he opens his mouth, but all that comes out is one, broken, wretched syllable of noise, and Steve’s heart shatters.

“Is this yours?” Steve extends his hands, holding the fur reverently, not wanting it to fall to the floor because it’s simply too beautiful to be dropped so carelessly.

The man’s expression tightens, his eyes darting to the fur, back to Steve’s face, and again to the fur. He lifts his hands as cautiously as Steve moves his, and the music swells back up from the orchestra without either of them noticing. 

“Take it,” Steve encourages him. “If it’s yours, take it-”

Even if it wasn’t his, Steve would want him to have it, the longing and aching joy in the man’s eyes a potent motivator for the gift. 

The man’s hands are shaking when he collects the fur from Steve, and with another, staggering noise of near-grief, he clutches it to his chest. Something feral slips behind his eyes, and he turns and stares at the exit, the fur gripped to him so tightly, Steve thinks he’s trying to make it part of himself. 

A faint echo rings in his ears, a story his mother had told him - _ those were myths, _ he wants to think, _ children’s stories of a people long gone from this world - _but it fades away when the man turns to him, leans up on his toes, and kisses Steve on one cheek, and then the other.

He has to press up on his toes to do it, and his lips are cool against Steve’s overheated skin; both kisses carve an electric path straight to the core of him, and he’s frozen again by this man, arrested to the spot, and he can do absolutely nothing when the man gives him a look that resonates with farewell and turns to slip through the crowd to the door, moving with a speed that Pietro would find impressive.

Steve’s still standing, staring at the door the man vanished through, his cheeks and stomach burning, when Rumlow returns, Pierce hot on his heels.

“--it must have fallen out somewhere around--” Rumlow draws up short, fury and anxiety at war in his face, and he sneers at Steve. “Captain.”

“Mr. Rumlow.” Steve nods with a slight amount of respect, for the title if nothing else, as he turns to address Pierce. “Secretary.”

“Captain Rogers.” Pierce speaks with a smoothness that Sarah Rogers had taught Steve to distrust. “I’m so sorry to bother you when there are so many more interesting things we could be speaking of, but I was wondering if you’d seen where your elusive dance partner had gone.”

“He left.” Steve shoves his hands in the pockets of his suits in a way that would make Pepper cringe, and shrugs with a defensive sort of affability.

It’s as though alarm bells are ringing under his skin - Rumlow’s expression and his words when he drew near, the sheer, soul-crushing relief on the mysterious man’s face when Steve had handed over the fur - these people shouldn’t ever be allowed to see Steve’s dance partner ever again. He’s as sure of it as he is of anything else in his life. When Steve makes up his mind, it’s set. 

“He _ left _.” Pierce repeats, a layer of acid coating his voice as he turns to glare at Rumlow. His face smooths back over when he returns his gaze to Steve, and Steve keeps his expression impassive, glad for the lessons Nat had given him in controlling himself. “Tell me, Captain, did he have anything in his possession when he left?”

“Are you trying to suggest your colleague stole something?” Steve’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead, but he maintains a cool tone of voice. “Because I’m sure Tony would be happy to review the security footage.”

“No, no,” Pierce waves a hand, but something’s settled in his face, as though he views this conversation as more of a confrontation now. Steve sets his jaw and crosses his arms in front of his chest. _ Like he’d be afraid of some two-bit politician. _“That isn’t necessary. I’m sure my associate merely forgot to return the item to my care before leaving. We’ll settle it ourselves.

“I’m sure you will.” Steve fights the urge to haul back and punch Pierce in the face in hopes of shattering the false politeness he wears as a mask. “I hope you had a pleasant birthday, Secretary.”

He turns and walks away, in the opposite direction of Pierce and Rumlow, and when he finally finds his way downstairs to his apartment, Steve sets the scarf he’d knitted in the last month outside the door and prays that when Brigid finds it, she’ll continue on to bless the man with blue-grey eyes and ensure he’ll never have to see those men again.

And when he dreams that night, he dreams the man reaches through the glass of his prison and pulls him to safety. Steve tells himself later, as he dwells in the space between sleep and waking, that it's not selfish for him to have dreamed it; after all, it’s only fair that they take turns saving each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Selkies, in case you haven't heard too much about them, come from Gaelic/Celtic mythology. They're traditionally depicted as beautiful seal-people, who swim in the ocean as seals, and walk on land as humans. When they're in their human form, they carry their "Sealskin" around with them.
> 
> In most myths, evil or wicked/selfish fishermen find the selkie, take their sealskin, and lock it away, forcing the selkie to stay with them, usually as a spouse. Even if the selkie falls in love with a human (which can be super yikes in most stories), they miss the sea to the point of pain, and need to return to the water in order to remain healthy. 
> 
> Selkies are often thought to have superhuman speed/stamina/strength, and can be considered immortal.
> 
> St. Brigid's Day/Imbolc begins at sundown on the last day of January, and goes to the sunset of the next day. Steve leaves a scarf out at the end to be blessed by the patron saint - she's supposed to walk over it on her way past the door and bless it// the scarf is then thought to take on slightly healing properties for the coming year. I took a lot of liberties with Imbolc/blended it with some of the worldbuilding I had in mind, but here's a [basic idea of what the day means](https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/st-brigids-day-traditions)  

> 
> Also YES this is 100% based on that tumblr post about a person giving someone what they thought was their coat and then oops it was their sealskin and now OOPS we're engaged because that's a selkie culture feature. I dug through the Stucky tag to make sure that this exact trope hadn't been done before, and from what I could find from the SelkieAU tag, it hadn't!!! Please let me know if I'm wrong because I would love to read it.


	2. Brighton Beach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve goes for a run and encounters a now-familiar face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and welcome back! sorry for the big breaks in updates. Life has been SUPER stressful recently, and thank you for being patient with me!
> 
> _chapter warnings_  
Continued nightmares about death  
References to canon drowning  
Reference to canon character death  
Loss of mother  
Mild cursing  
Guns

_ “I don’t want to die like this _.”

The plane, again. The cold, again. Drowning, _ again. _

Steve bangs on the glass, shouting into the dark water, begging the universe for help. The water pours in through the cracks, swallows him whole, and even as the cold steals the breath from his lungs, the weak plea slips from his lips.

“I don’t want to die. Please.”

The last of the lights on the dashboard blink out, and Steve closes his eyes, waiting for the cold to take him; before he can let go, a light blossoms behind his eyelids, tinging the darkness an eerie red. When he opens his eyes, it’s to a cabin bathed in blue light, not cold and frightening like the light Hydra used to destroy its enemies, but a soft blue, one that illuminates the water naturally.

He came back.

Blue eyes - grey-blue, as beautiful as they were on the dance floor - stare at Steve as he drifts in the freezing water, and red lips part to reveal a dazzling smile of pearl-white teeth. 

A hand reaches out to him, cutting through the darkness, and Steve reaches back, disbelieving that the nightmare is over, and a promise whispered through tons of glass and metal was real. Their fingers meet, slip, and then catch, and with an unnatural strength, the figure behind the glass pulls Steve free into open water -

-When Steve sits up in his bed at 4:30 a.m. on Imbolc, his cheeks are stained with tears. For once, he doesn’t push them when until his feet are firmly planted on the floor, and instead lets them run their course, not knowing why an imagined savior with the eyes of the most familiar stranger he’s ever met could affect him so much. 

Jarvis doesn’t chime in without invitation at his Brooklyn apartment, where he’d ended up after last night’s festivities, so no one’s there to ask him why he’s crying and staring out the east-facing window of his bedroom. The apartment is dark - uncomfortably close to the darkness of his dream - and Steve walks through it as though a guest in his own home. He can’t be more than three miles from where he grew up, but the Brooklyn of 2014 even sounds different in the early hours of the morning. There’s no comfort for him here, and the unsettling itch, the one that’s plagued him since he emerged from the ice that had imprisoned him for decades, reemerges in full force, signaling to his body that it’s time to move.

The sun is nowhere near the horizon when Steve laces up his shoes and heads out into the city. Brooklyn hums with an undercurrent in the soft, purple light of pre-dawn, and Steve heads through the market being set up along Van Brunt. He ducks his head as he passes Maggie’s stall - it’s not that he doesn’t want to say hello to the old woman, it’s that he’ll have to have a full conversation with the witch if he so much as waves at her. 

Maggie remembers when Steve was small, is the problem. She was six when he went off to fight, is the problem. Her old brother, Tom, fought on the front lines with Steve, is the problem.

Maggie’s mother, Saorise, another witch, had the gift of foresight, a gift she’d passed on to her daughter. Tom did not, which is why he didn’t see the bullet coming until it caught him in the gut, and Steve had caught him in his arms as he choked and stumbled backwards. It happened five years ago and seventy years ago all at once, and Steve doesn’t like the way Maggie talks to him sometimes: it’s not like she blames him for her brother’s death, not at all, but like she likes to make odd comments about how much more _ life _Steve has left, and his destiny as a savior, of the sacrifices he still has to make.

It makes him feel a little creeped out, so yeah, he avoids cute, little, octogenarian Maggie Riley, with her iron grey curling hair and twinkling eyes, who married a kid from the block and lived her life in the right order but has been cursed with seeing it a little before everyone else.

Steve makes it down the market without being spotted, and he lets his stride increase as he heads when he hits Prospect Park. He startles a few pigeons from their rest in the softening grey of the morning, and he grins despite the itch under his skin, the feeling in his gut that something is about to _ happen. _He makes it through the park in record time and careens towards Ocean Parkway,

After a rousing argument with Fury - a seer who could learn a thing or two from Maggie Riley - Steve was forbidden from running down official highways, no matter how thrilling it was to race cars, so he sticks to the side streets as he winds his way south through a waking Brooklyn.

His lungs are beginning to burn in the cold air, and the itch is subsiding into an all too familiar ache as he spies the sky blossoming with pinks and purples, and the wind sharpens and grows heavy with salt as he approaches the water. 

It’s when he hits Brighton Beach that he lets his feet stumble to a halt, and his breath is joyously ragged as he bends, hands on his knees, to suck in another harsh breath, filling his lungs with salted air that comes in strong off the sea. 

The beach is abandoned at this time of day, even the more avid runners avoiding the brine and wind in favor of the paved streets and quiet parks he’s left behind him. Steve collapses in the sand, dragging the heels of his hands across his tired eyes, trying to leave the grit and ghosts of his dreams behind him, and the sound of the ocean offers him a tense sort of relief. He won’t touch the waves (hasn’t been in open water since the plane buried him below the surface for nearly seventy years), but instinctively recognizes the waves crashing as the lullaby that had helped soothe him as he waited in suspended agony. 

Trying to force his thoughts to calm, Steve hangs his head between his knees and waits for the sun to rise fully before he returns to an empty apartment that only offers a little more light in the daytime.

For a long time, the only sounds are the waves, and the gulls, and his own already slowed breaths, but a faint splash registers in his mind, cutting through his attempts to clear it. Assuming it’s a leaping fish or plunging bird, Steve doesn’t lift his head, but he soon hears something moving through the sand, almost too quiet to be footsteps. 

He looks up when he senses someone standing over him, and immediately he startles, his eyes widening in surprise as he races to get to his feet.

The man from last night, his mysterious dance partner, stands there in the early morning light, his thick, dark hair weighed down by salt water which runs in rivulets along his sharp jaw and elegant neck; it settles into his shirt, staining it until it’s translucent, and Steve’s throat goes dry at the way the material clings to his muscular torso.

It takes him a second to realize it, but he notices before he’s stumbled all the way upright: the man is dressed in the same tight-fitting pair of pants from the party, and his shirt is the same as well. He’s missing the well-tailored suit jacket, but it’s clear that he never went home to change after the festivities.

“Good morning,” Steve says, his brain on auto-pilot and relying on the manners Sarah Rogers had drilled into him at a young age. “How are you?”

The beautiful man stares at him, eyes mournful again, his expression one torn between agony and common frustration. He opens his mouth, but only makes an irritated noise, and he throws an arm out from his lithe body demonstratively. Steve’s eyes catch on the dark, sleek coat he’d handed to him the night before; it’s now draped over the man’s arm, but when Steve looks at it, the man’s expression shifts from irritated to frightened, a fear that needs no translation written clearly on his face.

Steve holds his hand out and smiles nervously, wanting to relay his lack-of-threat to the man, and when he smiles, the man shifts his stance in the sand, his eyes softening, before smiles back. 

It’s dazzling, and Steve’s shocked at how well it matches the smile he’d seen in his dream last night - it has to be a coincidence, or his brain searching for a connection where none exists.

When the sun breaks past the thin layer of clouds on the horizon, the other man turns and scowls at it, huffing irately before glancing at Steve through lowered lashes. He lifts an eyebrow, clearly waiting for Steve to say something, and he clears his throat if only to shake his heart loose - if they found each other on this beach on Imbolc of all days, he shouldn’t ignore the coincidence.

“Wanna grab breakfast?” No response, not even a nod or a grimace. Steve winces and tries again, hoping that he was misunderstood and the idea of getting a meal with him wasn’t simply met with stony faced apathy: “Would you like to get something to eat?”

He pantomimes eating something, feeling foolish about it half a second later, but the man’s expression brightens even more before he nods, a shy and tentative movement.

“Alright.” Steve holds his hand out. “I’m Steve Rogers, by the way.”

The man stares at him, something like amusement in his eyes, as his head cocks to the side. It looks as though he already knows this, and the idea strikes Steve like lightning. Of course he already knows this. He’s --

“Right. Captain America.” He huffs a self-deprecating laugh. “Guess that’s pretty obvious, huh?”

A soft noise, almost a croon, escapes the man’s pretty mouth (and the fact that he’s thinking of this man’s mouth as _ pretty _ speaks for itself, and yeah, maybe the idea of getting food with him is a little too enticing because not only would they spend more time together, Steve might also have the chance to _ fondue _or whatever the fuck it is kids are calling it these days), and Steve realizes the man isn’t going to take his hand anytime soon.

“Uh.” He pulls his hand away and puts it awkwardly on his hip for something to do with it. “What’s your name?”

The man stares at the sea for a long time, hissing under his breath with a scowl, and Steve’s about to apologize when he turns to face him again, an impossible grief in his eyes.

“You don’t have to tell me.” Steve shrugs and smiles hesitantly. “If you’re - if you’re worried about something?” 

Pierce could be involved in something horrifying, maybe the man is afraid of legal repercussions, or is under deep cover, and Steve has a strong sense that the man is half a second away from startling and disappearing forever.

But, the other man steels himself and stands up straight before holding a hand over his heart. “Buadhach,” he says in a hoarse voice, and it all starts to fall into place.

Steve feels the ground give way beneath him - and it could be that he’s a grandchild, or a distant relative who bears the same name, but not with those eyes, those eyes couldn’t happen more than once in a millenia, could they?

“Buadhach?” He whispers, taking an involuntary step forward. “What - I - I had a friend with that name.”

The man - Buadhach - stares at him pleadingly, eyes wide, his lower lip trembling with some powerful emotion, and he doesn’t flinch away from Steve’s hand when he raises it to his face, but he holds off from touching him all the same. 

“But that was 1936,” Steve continues, his voice as hoarse as Buadhach’s now, but from shock and not disuse. “That was _ eighty _years ago. That can’t be -”

Buadhach sighs, and Steve’s shock intensifies when he tilts his head right into Steve’s outstretched hand; he rubs his face against his palm not unlike a cat, before leaning his cheek into Steve’s hand and staring up at him with a mixture of fear and hope. 

“Buadhach,” Steve repeats. “But the night we met, I called you-”

“Bucky,” Buadhach whispers, and it’s like a punch to the gut. 

* * *

_ January 15, 1936 _

Steve shivered because there was nothing left to do. His mother was beyond reach, swallowed whole by the earth she’d cared for so intensely in her thirty-eight years. No one was left for him to talk to; the priest had returned to his parish, his mother’s family in Ireland had cast her out years ago, and he didn’t have a friend in the world.

The sea churned beneath the trembling wood of the dock, and Steve’s misery wrapped around him like a blanket, blocking him from fully noticing the freezing air and spray that bit at his ankles while his legs dangled off the side of the dock. He sniffed once, then twice, using his thin, blistered hand to wipe his too big nose. 

All the tears he would shed today were gone, vanished into the ocean, which had stood as an impassive judge to his grief.

Without warning, someone sat next to him on the dock; when Steve looked over at him, mouth open and ready to shout, ready to curse at whoeve had dared to interrupt his misery, he choked on whatever words he would have used.

The person who’d sat next to him was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen - a thought he best keep to himself, Steve realized. 

But, the man’s eyes - the most spectacular shade of blue he’d ever seen, in his dully colored world - skimmed over Steve with unguarded interest, which brought much needed heat to Steve’s chest and core. 

“Hello.” Steve held his hand out with a weak smile. “I’m Steve Rogers.”

The man didn’t take his hand - merely stared at it in confusion - but smiled back at him, a smile even brighter than his eyes, brighter than the sun that hung low in the horizon. 

“Steve Rogers,” he repeated. “Buadhach.”

“Buadhach?” Steve smiled with more strength now. “Victorious.” He laughed, a little bitterly, and stared over the man’s shoulder towards the open sea. “Coulda used a little victory earlier this week.”

“_ You are sad _ ,” Buadhach noted in oddly accented Gaelic, and Steve started at the use of his mother’s tongue. “ _ Why are you sad, Steve Rogers _?”

“_ My mother is dead, _ ” Steve answered in Gaelic, throat tight as he said the words. Words had power, after all, and giving life to those words meant his mother was even farther away from life than before. “ _ She is dead, and she - I am alone _.” 

He ducked his head, ashamed to be mourning the loss of his mother for the sake of her company, but Buadhach tucked his cool, soft fingers under Steve’s chin and lifted it.

“_ You are not alone, _ ” Buadhach murmured, words more like song in his voice. “ _ You called me here. _”

Steve frowned, assuming that he was mistranslating Buadhach’s intended statement; he couldn’t frown for long, wanting to see the smile return to the man’s face even here on the worst day of his life. 

“I guess I’m not alone right now,” Steve muttered before sighing and pulling away from Buadhach reluctantly. He looked over his shoulder nervously to see if anyone had seen them leaning into each other - a brawl sounded tempting but perhaps it wasn’t the best choice right after burying his mother - before he turned back to Buadhach.

“Hey - why are you all wet?” Steve asked, suddenly concerned for the other man; it was freezing outside, and seawater was dripping from his hair and pooling under him on the dock.

Buadhach shrugged before standing gracefully, folding a sleek coat over his arm. “_ Come with me, Steve Rogers, _ ” he said in that same musical Gaelic, “ _ Show me where you live. _”

“Uh.” Steve’s jaw dropped - he’d never been so openly propositioned before, but he supposed at the very least he could get this man’s life story to distract himself from the grief yawning wide in his chest. “Yeah. Sure. Uh. This way?” 

He stood, staggering slightly, and Buadhach caught him, his strong arms bracing Steve with an alluring sense of security.

“_ Like a pup, _ ” Buadhach laughed, wrapping an arm around Steve’s shoulders. “ _ I will help you. _”

“I don’t need anyone’s help,” Steve grumbled, shoving only half-heartedly at Buadhach’s arm. They walked up the dock towards land, and Steve hummed to himself. “Say, Buadhach, are you hungry?”

Buadhach hummed, and Steve took that to be a yes. 

“Let’s see what we can do about that,” Steve said, mostly to himself. “And we can get you dry, too. You don’t wanna walk around like that Buadhach, you’ll get sick.”

Buadhach only laughed again, and when Steve looked up at his new friend in the dying rays of sunlight, he swallowed at the sight of the long, clean lines of his throat, prettier than a picture, and hopefully, not off-limits for long.

“_ You are funny, Steve Rogers, _” Buadhach said happily. 

“And you’re an odd guy yourself, Buadhach,” Steve countered, steering Buadhach through the more crowded part of the docks. “That’s a tough one though - was never practicing my Gaelic like I shoulda - how ‘bout I call you Bucky?”

“Bucky,” Buadhach repeated, tasting the word for himself. When Steve glanced at him over his shoulder, he saw a broad smile on the man’s face. “I like it.”

With an inexplicable grin on his own face, Steve continued to guide Buadhach, now Bucky, through the market and towards the small apartment he used to share with his mother, the apartment that would hopefully have another occupant for at least another night.

* * *

_ Imbolc 2014 _

Steve doesn’t have a doubt now: it _ is _ the same man - eighty years later, and like Steve, he hasn’t been aged by the past century. 

“How is that possible?” He asks, heart pounding now. “How can you be the same man?”

Bucky snorts and lifts his eyebrow, gesturing at Steve. He doesn’t say a word, in Gaelic, or English, or Russian, but his expression speaks for itself.

_ I could say the same thing about you, pal. _

“Fair enough,” Steve mutters, and Bucky laughs, a rusted but beautiful sound. 

Steve doesn’t think he’s imagining that while Bucky doesn’t look noticeably older, he does look tired, and scared, and he remembers how they even met in the first place last night.

“Why didn’t you say something at the party?” Steve asks, and Bucky’s expression shutters. “And why are you with Pierce?”

Bucky spits into the sand, a sour look on his handsome face, and Steve has a very strong feeling that whatever answer he might get to that second question might inspire him to react a little violently, that is to say, snapping the Secretary’s neck.

“We can talk about that later.” Steve holds his hand out again until Bucky takes it, his movements tentative and slightly fearful. “Let’s - let’s get you somewhere so you can dry off, huh?’

Bucky laughs again, the sound looser this time, and he’s still giggling as they walk off the beach and start heading north.

“It’s a bit of a far walk,” Steve apologizes. “I, uh, got carried away running this morning. I’m a little more...y’know, since the last time you saw me.”

He’s met with a confused look, and he gestures with his free hand at his much larger, much more muscular body. “I - got some, er, help. So I could go fight. Wasn’t always this handsome, remember?”

Bucky glowers at that, his grip tightening around Steve’s hand, and he opens his beautiful mouth, clearly to give an opinion quite strongly.

A second later, Bucky’s pulling Steve hard, away from the curb of the sidewalk, panic in his eyes.

“Whoa!” Steve stumbles as Bucky pulls him for the nearest building. “What’s-”

A black SUV drives towards them with the sort of speed that shouldn’t be allowed at 6:30 in the morning, and especially not a sleepy, narrow street. Bucky keeps tugging on Steve’s hand, his breathing audibly shifting towards hyperventilation, and Steve steps in front of Bucky like a shield.

“Do you know them?” Steve asks, not looking over his shoulder to confirm Bucky’s still at his six; the back window of the SUV rolls down, and a gun emerges, and Steve realizes that there are much more important questions that need to be answered. “Get down!” 

He pushes Bucky to the sidewalk, ignoring his mild squawk of indignation, and runs for the SUV.

“Steve!” Bucky shouts, panic lacing his voice.

Steve runs in a zig-zag, sprinting at the SUV, and before the would-be shooter gets a chance to lock on him, he leaps and punches the front of the SUV, sending it over his head in a horrific arc.

It slams into the street behind him - Steve ignores the throbbing of broken bones in his hand - and he doesn’t give whoever’s in there a chance to get out and start shooting. If he were by himself, he’d rip the door off the hinges and pull out the driver to shake him down, but he can see Bucky in his periphery, shouting himself even more hoarse, and the fear in his voice causes him to make a very different choice than normal.

“We’re getting out of here,” Steve decides, running for Bucky. He grabs him by the hand and tugs him towards an alley. “Run.”

“Gods, you’re still a fucking idiot!” Bucky shouts as they run, and Steve laughs and laughs and laughs because of course _ that _would be Bucky’s first full sentence to him since the thirties.

“You bet,” Steve agrees. 

And even though they’re running for their lives, even though Steve hasn’t even had breakfast yet and people are shooting at him, even though he’s got a very bad feeling that whoever that was back there wants something from the man running at his side, Steve realizes this is probably the happiest he’s been since he woke up from the ice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ?!?!????!?!?!?!?!??!!?
> 
> What was that?
> 
> And when will our boys get to eat breakfast??
> 
> (Also, someone was kind enough to link me ANOTHER Stucky story where the "i gave you your skin back and now we're married oops" trope is used, and lemme tell ya, it's pretty damn good: [here it is](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16013840/chapters/37369127) )

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading xoxo


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